Music Education

Your Nov. 10 editorial page praises an initiative to make two hours of reading practice compulsory in elementary schools and in the same breath deplores the fact that California has the nation’s second-worst ratio of music teachers to students. Well, there’s a connection: It’s called dumbing down the curriculum.

School boards and voters have to learn to trust teachers to know where help is needed, and stop trying to turn our schools into boot camps for the basics.

MICHAEL BLOXHAM

Forest Falls

*

Thank you for “Study Suggests Music May Someday Help Repair Brain” (Nov. 9). It is ironic that with all we know of music’s life-enhancing qualities, it has been cut out of most public schools’ curricula, along with visual arts, dancing and most creative arts.

Generations of children are being denied civilized society’s most powerful tools.

RUTH ROSEN

Santa Monica